■ Thailand
Buddhist teacher murdered
Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead a Buddhist teacher in Thailand's restive Muslim south yesterday, the latest casualty in a spate of violence which has claimed over 200 lives since January, police said. The 49-year-old, who was a principal at an Islamic school, was shot as he was about to start his car parked in school grounds in Pattani Province, police said. The shooting came just over a week after an elderly Buddhist man was beheaded at a rubber plantation in Narathiwat Province, an incident which heightened fears of sectarian tension in the troubled region. Police declined to speculate on the motive for the killing.
■ Pakistan
Aid workers hide in hotel
Foreign aid workers have taken shelter in a hotel in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta after authorities warned them that Taliban rebels were planning suicide attacks against their offices, officials said. Some 25 expatriates from the UN and Western aid groups have left their residences and moved to Quetta's Serena Hotel -- just days after suspected Taliban gunmen killed five aid workers in neighboring Afghanistan. A Pakistani government agency responsible for security at refugee camps in southwestern Baluchistan province alerted the UN refugee agency and five non-governmental organizations over the weekend that groups with American and British employees were targets of the threat.
■ Pakistan
Truck plummets down ravine
A truck packed with pilgrims fell into a deep ravine in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 35 people and wounding eight others, a police official said yesterday. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident late Sunday near Abbottabad, about 200km northeast of Peshawar, and police official Shaukat Khan said authorities have transported bodies and injured to a nearby hospital. He said the pilgrims were returning from a shrine in Murree, a hill resort near the capital, Islamabad, but gave no additional details.
■ Singapore
New PM denies nepotism
Incoming prime minister Lee Hsien Loong denied speculation that his elevation to the nation's top job was because he was the son of the city-state's founder, a newspaper reported yesterday. "I have been in politics 20 years. People know me," the Straits Times quoted Lee as saying on Sunday. Lee, 52, is Singapore's deputy prime minister, finance minister and head of the central bank. He is the eldest son of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, and many political observers have suggested that he has been groomed to follow his father's footsteps since he was a boy.
■ Australia
Homicides down 15 percent
Homicides claimed the lives of 324 people in Australia last year -- a 15 percent decline from the year before, according to statistics released yesterday. The Australian Institute of Criminology figures showed there were 297 homicide cases resulting in the deaths of 324 people last year, down from 381 in 2002. That gave Australia, with a population of 20 million, a national homicide rate of 1.6 per 100,000 population, the lowest rate since the institute started collecting the figures in 1990. Homicides include cases that led to murder or manslaughter convictions, ranging from stabbing deaths to a case in which a tourist was killed by a crocodile after a tour guide told her it was safe to swim in a water hole in northern Australia.
■ Venezuela
Chavez rallies supporters
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez rallied tens of thousands of supporters onto the streets of Caracas on Sunday as he kicked off an electoral campaign ahead of an August recall referendum on his five-year rule. In a river of bright red flags and banners, Chavez supporters packed a major Caracas avenue as bands blasted out salsa, folk songs and political slogans in support of his self-styled revolution for the poor. After a year-long opposition campaign, electoral authorities last week ruled they had secured a recall vote against Chavez, a left-leaning ex-army officer portrayed by foes as a authoritarian strongman keen to copy Cuban communism.
■ DR Congo
Peacekeepers killed
Two UN peacekeepers were killed and nine wounded in an ambush in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Sunday. The peacekeepers, all South African, were shot at by unknown gunmen about 40km north of the town of Goma, said a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo. Witnesses told UN officials that the assailants were extremists from the Hutu ethnic group, the BBC reported. The UN could not confirm the identity of the attackers. Hutu extremists have waged war in the region since leading the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
■ France
Rape and murder trial opens
A Spanish drifter was due to go on trial in western France yesterday for the rape and murder of a 13-year-old British schoolgirl at a Brittany youth hostel nearly eight years ago. Francisco Arce Montes, 54, is alleged to have broken into the hostel in Pleine-Fougeres on July 18, 1996 and suffocated Caroline Dickinson as he sexually assaulted her in a dormitory. Arce Montes was eventually arrested in the US in March 2001 after committing a sexual assault in a Miami hotel. He was identified only thanks to a US police officer who read an article about the Dickinson case while on holiday in London and suggested a link. Prosecutors say that for 15 years Arce Montes was a serial sexual predator on young girls during lengthy travels through Europe and South America.
■ Germany
Universe horn-shaped?
Scientists in Germany believe the universe could be shaped like a horn or trumpet. A complex mathematical model called a Picard topology best fits recent observations of the "echo" left by the Big Bang at the dawn of creation. According to the model, the cosmos is stretched out into a long funnel, with one end flaring out into a bell. According to the theory from a group of German physicists led by Frank Steiner at the University of Ulm, the "trumpet" is infinitely long, but so narrow that it has a finite volume. At the other end the horn flares out, but not forever. If a spaceship were able to fly towards the flared end, at some point it would end up flying back in on the other side of the horn.
■ United States
J-Lo weds again
Call them the new Latino superstar couple. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez has married Latin crooner Marc Anthony in a quiet ceremony in her Los Angeles home, according to US media reports. The wedding came just five months after the end of Lopez' relationship with actor Ben Affleck, and only a week after Anthony finalized his divorce from former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres. It is Lopez third marriage, and the second for Anthony.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the